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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29477244">Five Times They Said "I Love You" (and One Time They Didn't Have To)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TopHat/pseuds/TopHat'>TopHat</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Parahumans Series - Wildbow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Porn, Prom, Tags to be added, with illustrations!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 22:20:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,003</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29477244</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TopHat/pseuds/TopHat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Miss Militia X Chevalier smut. I added some plot, ElCuervo did the drawings, and documents their relationship from Wards to Gold Morning. AU where they stayed together. In this fic I've head-canon'd Chevalier's name to be "Tristan."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Chevalier/Hannah | Hana | Miss Militia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“We should head upstairs,” Hannah whispered, her head against Tristan’s chest.</p><p>He didn’t speak at first, which Hannah didn’t mind. The song, something she still didn’t quite understand when the words went too fast, was one she’d liked. She hadn’t known it before the night had started, and even now she felt it dissolving into the whirlwind that had started when she, Karrin, Tristan, and Quinn all piled into the rented limo (driven by a plain-clothes PRT agent, because of course the living weapons needed a chaperone), moved to the buffet in a hotel ballroom where they’d briefly mingled with their other graduating classmates, and then truly transformed into something magical when Hannah had taken the infinitely-large step to the dance floor, losing awareness of the gun under her arm, the flashes behind her eyes, and the way her mouth and mind didn’t feel like her own in the strange new world of cars and push-up bras and sports teams and celebrities with names that seemed more fitting to dogs than people.</p><p>Instead Hannah focused on the swing of her arms, of the bodies around her, of the air around her warmed into something like a shirt fresh out of the dryer. She let herself ‘accidentally’ lean in Tristan, spinning away moments later, only for him to follow in an awkward imitation of a waltz that had her smiling without fear. This, in turn, brought a rare smile out of Tristan, softening the hard lines he didn’t deserve, allowing the two of them to fit together like shattered glass in a mosaic, and as they left the Hotel Room (because of course they had to leave, had to separate from the civilians) Hannah’s hands never left Tristan’s, all the way to the afterparty of Just Wards back at HQ.</p><p>
  <em> Is this what Prom is like for other American girls? </em>
</p><p>Slowly, Hannah felt the two of them drifting to the edge of the dance floor, a pointlessly subtle maneuver when everyone else was either asleep, playing spin-the-bottle, or staring pointedly at them before turning away to watch Karrin make a show of wiping her mouth after having tongued Fabio.</p><p>She didn’t rush him, though. There was a good chance that the wait was for his benefit as much as hers.</p><p>As soon as they broke line of sight on the rest of the Wards, Hannah turned up for a kiss and found Tristan’s lips almost immediately. She almost stumbled over her heels before kicking them off, humming in satisfaction as Tristan’s fingers flowed through her hair, undoing the braids and twists so painstakingly woven just hours earlier. She in turn lost a hand’s worth of fingers in his curls, uncombed and untamed, while her other hand began playing with the buttons of his shirt.</p><p>It was almost irritating that, after two months of dating, several weeks of less-than-chaste behavior, and an exchange of oral sex, Tristan still felt the need to pull out of a kiss a flight of stairs, two hallways, and a discard suit coat later before asking, “Are you sure you want to do this?”</p><p>That said, part of the reason Hannah pulled him back down and said, “Yes,” was because he was the sort of person who would ask.</p><p>You could call Tristan boring. You could call him that when he talked down a jumper, or when he resolved a fistfight without so much as brandishing a weapon. You could call him that when he showed up to school with a neat haircut, an unremarkable button-up, and slacks that were almost criminally banal next to the tube-tops, bell-bottoms, double- or triple-layered shirts, the lone crow among a flock of parakeets.</p><p>You could not call Tristan a coward though, and after Hannah gave him the go-ahead his hand went straight to her thigh, hiked up her leg, and he began pressing into her.</p><p>“Your room or mine?” he asked, each word space by a sucking kiss, one after the other, ending at the shell of her ear.</p><p>“Here,” Hannah whispered, pulling him in with one leg as her free hand went to his pants. “Right here. Right now.”</p><p>There were perhaps a million and three reasons why fucking her team leader was a bad idea. There was the compromised chain of command to consider, the preferential treatment which would inevitably be born of the coupling (not because Tristan was anything less than fair, but because she wouldn’t be able to call him out on his bullshit if this was any good at all). There was her (and his) image as pure defenders of law, order, and waiting until marriage, the lost popularity points among Evangelical Christians should the secret come to light (though the warm heat in her hands, becoming increasingly hard as she rubbed it, seemed to melt that worry like snow in an oven). There was the risk of pregnancy, of powers somehow misfiring—</p><p>She broke out in kiss, making enough room to take a breath and speak. “Knife. Thigh holster.”</p><p>As soon as she said it, Hannah felt the comforting tightness of leather on skin, and a muscle she didn’t know was tense relaxed. “Now fuck me.”</p><p>It hurt at first. Every woman and girl she’d asked about sex had said it hurt at first, so that wasn’t a surprise. What was surprising was how quickly it began to feel <em> good </em> , how she adjusted to the thrusting, to the <em> thump </em> of her back against the slowly-warming wall, how the feeling of fullness made her toes and fingers curl, how irrationally <em> furious </em> she was that a few layers of cloth dared to separate her from the one person who’d seen the pockmarks where a fisherman’s net had served as an improvised weapon and never flinched—</p><p>Her hand on Tristan’s back filled with a molded grip, her thumb settling against the comforting coolness of metal, and she laid the flat against his spine. “Don’t flinch.”</p><p>One stroke to peel off his shirt. One tug to cast it aside. She felt herself sliding, overbalanced, and threw her arms around Tristan’s neck, legs locking behind his hips, and his hands fell to her ass holding her in place, a throaty growl mixing with her own moans into something this side of feral.</p><p><em> Karrin is going to be so fucking jealous </em>.</p><p>“Your room,” he said, and this time it wasn’t a question.</p><p>The knife made short work of the straps on her dress, of the straps of her bra, of what remained of the band of her panties. Tristan’s pants had long since disappeared, but the remaining guard of flesh soon too fell away, joining the trail of fabric from hallway to bedchamber, walked by two people and one set of feet.</p><p>Tristan began to topple, but Hannah twisted at the last moment, sending his back to the bed. Eyes snapped open, only to close moments later, and an icicle formed in Hannah’s heart.</p><p>“Did I—”</p><p>“Power.”</p><p>“Oh. Right.”</p><p>For a few moments she just lay against him, letting the cool air war with body heat, cords of muscles, sparse scars, and the scent of <em> boy </em> that, while not new to her sheets, felt far stronger than before.</p><p>Then she kissed him, put her hand over his eyes, and said, “We can figure that out later.”</p><p>At first it didn’t feel deep enough. Not that Tristan had felt <em> small </em> in the hallway (or in her mouth, days ago, one of his hands on her head and the other clutching a bed frame), but it was as if it wasn’t all in. Sitting up a little helped that, and after a few twists she settled into a grinding pattern, focusing on the growing heat in her loins, on the brush of her clit against the downy hair of his groin, of the surprising (but not unwelcome) appearance of hands on her breasts, pulling lightly at her nipples, supplemented by petal-soft lips when he pushed up past her hand, pulling her into a hug and reigniting the wonderful warmth of skin-on-skin.</p><p>
  <em> Why the fuck was I so worried? This is easy. </em>
</p><p>Tristan finished first. That was expected, another element of firsts every single woman and girl had warned Hannah about. She hadn’t, not yet, but rolled off him anyway, riding the high of exertion, sweat, and heat, feeling a wetness between her thighs which was not all hers. For a moment she was worried that sliding a leg over his would be gross, and then remembered Tristan had been inside her moments ago.</p><p>They lay there, breathing in the same air, and reveling in having finally done the impossible.</p><p>“I love you,” Tristan said. Under her fingers Hannah felt his chest tense, felt his fingers twitch, and heard the swallow under his breath.</p><p>“I love you too,” Hannah echoed, wishing she’d said it first.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Hop on, loser, we’re going patrolling.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tristan looked at Hannah, spread out like a pin-up star with a coat he’d never seen before, a rose picked out in thread on an olive background, radiating smirking energy with eyes that burned hot as this side of the sun.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He turned back to Quinn. “We’ll talk over the schedule changes when I get back, okay?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Quinn’s blank mask, red over a white bodysuit, with matching pads and racing stripes, nodded once. “Enjoy your date.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s not—” Tristan began reflexively.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A roar of flame later and Conflagrate was gone, twisting away in the vortex of flames that was his breaker state.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I’m going to need to talk to him about this again.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s not a date?” she asked as he settled on the back of the bike, arms around her waist. He was armored, she was wearing kevlar and tinkerweave under the jacket and jeans, but Tristan still felt a thrill at the proximity.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s a joint patrol,” he replied smoothly, leaning with Hannah around curves with practice borne of more than a few dropped bikes. “Conflagrate is more than strong and mobile enough to solo patrol anyway, and our relative strengths complement each other.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And the chance to look at me is just a bonus?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A squeeze and Hannah was squealing. “The ogling I take for granted.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re bad!” The chastisement was undercut by giggling, and the next time they stopped at a red Hannah’s fingers found their way under his ab plate.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That tickles!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You first.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The bickering lasted until lunch, after which came the real work of the day. The city needed saving, not from criminals or supervillains (those were a once-a-month-thing, if that), but from boredom. These were heroes, real heroes, walking around like tame tigers, receiving questions and camera flashes like one-way mirrors, each and every word l already heard a hundred or more times each, every platitude or compliment earning and appropriately-humble-yet-hopeful response, like programmed puppets under the fingers of a master, one dedicated to turning a killer and an almost-killer into caricatures that would make Joe and Jane citizen fork over tax money to pay for child soldiers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’d talked over the whole situation with Hannah once, and she’d told him that it was still better than letting parahumans run around left to their own devices.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It wasn’t bad, though. No one got hurt, no one was too pushy (that day), and people left Tristan’s presence happier than they came. Hannah helped a group of young girls learn how to properly pepper spray someone, he’d done poses with some LARP’ers, and the PR panel had remained mercifully silent for the entire patrol. All in all, one of the most pleasant days at the office Tristan had had in recent memory.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That didn’t mean ripping off his helmet as soon as the HQ garage closed behind them wasn’t the best part of the day.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You have helmet hair,” Hannah commented, turning around and fussing with his head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I would trade my left nut to be able to go soft-top,” he replied, closing his eyes and enjoying the gentle scrape of nails against his scalp, sliding off the outer layers of his gear, starting at the gloves and working his way down. “Ahhhhh, that’s the stuff.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When the wire-tight fear of failure had receded to its normal levels, Tristan let his eyes fall open, momentarily staring into irises at once too old and too young. “I’ll do you know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Trey.” The words lacked fire though, and after laying back down against the bike.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That bad?” Tristan asked, hands sliding up under the jacket, following the contours of tensed muscles to their knots, trying his best to work the stress out without pressing too hard.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She shuddered under his hands. “Horrible.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tristan waited for the shakes to recede, then went back to gentle motions, fingertips skipping over sensitive, not-yet-fully-closed cuts, before returning to long-worn paths of healing. “Talk about it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Words,” she stated, and Tristan nodded, slowly sinking his thumbs deeper into the whirlpools of now-past anxiety right at the base of Hannah’s neck..</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Words,” he agreed, and for a few soothing minutes there was silence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then, “Sex?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tristan nodded, and began to get up, only for Hannah’s legs to lock behind his.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Here?” he asked, voice dropping to a whisper, eyes flicking from side to side as his heart rate skyrocketed to near-combat levels. They’d had fun in slightly-more public areas before, like the women’s locker room or the Ward’s common room, but in both cases they’d had a nigh-assurance that nobody would walk in on them (given that no one in their right mind was at either place past 1 AM).</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The garage at four on a weekday, though...</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Heels tapped against his ass. “Scared, Trey?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Well then.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tristan’s hands slid down Hannah’s back, fingertips never losing contact, before looping around to the front. “Only if you are.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By way of response, pressure rolled into Tristan's groin. “Shut up and get my pants off.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tristan clicked his tongue in her ear, close enough to lick, and began undoing buttons. “What’s the magic word?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can feel you through the codpiece,” Hannah whispered back. “Do you really want to see which one of us holds out longer?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>click </span>
  </em>
  <span>went the buckle on Hannah’s web belt, and to one side it fell. “You know me so well.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tristan still took his time pulling down Hannah’s pants and panties, pulling at her earlobe with his teeth and whispering incoherent promises. His own armor took an extra few seconds to lose, but the quick-release straps made short work of that. Normally they weren’t to pulled save for emergencies (putting the suit back together after a quick release was a pain and a half), but having a raging erection and a randy partner seemed like more than enough of a crisis to justify it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tristan lined himself up, then paused when he saw an open palm and two raised eyebrows, right above the too old/too young eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Please?” she said, and this time it wasn’t teasing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tristan leaned forward, laced his fingers with hers, and gently tapped her forehead with his own. “Love you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Love you,” Hannah echoed, tapping back.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tristan slipped forward, and then they were fucking.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They’d fucked before, a lot of times and a lot of different ways. Apparently that happened when oneself and another willing person were both of age and in need of release, with little fear of consequence. Each time Tristan found another type of perfect, and this time it was in the highlight of contact of hips, an awareness of the hollows between his thighs and groin that normally got lost in the storm of full-body contact and was this time a flash of sensation that seemed to throw everything else in shaper relief for its specificity. The soft glow of the garage lights, the creak of the bike’s suspensions as two bodies moved in rhythm upon it, the pressure between each finger when Hannah gripped his gauntlet, the muffled </span>
  <em>
    <span>huff </span>
  </em>
  <span>of her breath over his deep, long inhales, the slowly growing scent of sex and sweat set against the dampness under the armor he was still wearing that created a not-completely-unpleasent chafing sensation around each of his limbs—</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hannah’s other hand seized his, then pulled it away from its supporting position. Tristan fell forward, then came to a stop against the iron bar of her back.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Finish me off,” she whispered, guiding his hand down to her clit.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tristan kissed Hannah’s neck and followed her fingers, index and middle split, then stroking, pressed on and around by the two more calloused digits behind them. Hannah preferred his hands to her own most nights, citing softer fingertips and a gentler toucher than her own. Personally he preferred hers, textured and unique and unpredictable in a way that did not terrify him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tristan held Hannah as she seized up, tensing against him, and slowly loosened his grip as they relaxed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Once he knew the glow was gone, he whispered, “We should probably get out of the garage before someone finds us here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shit!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tristan barely kept a curse down as the top of her head crashed into his chin, and almost didn’t keep his balance as his bare ass fell on the now-cold bike seat. By the time he’d regained his bearings Hannah had gotten busy cleaning herself up using a spare mask.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This is definitely an OSHA violation of some sort,” she muttered, folding up the used garment and tucking it into her utility belt. “I’m going to have to clean everything. Twice.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can get the first time, if you want,” Tristan offered, rubbing his jaw, then froze. “My armor.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What about it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can’t put it back on.” Plans whirled through his mind, from streaking through the Wards HQ to hiding in the garage until Hannah could get him some pants to simply calling Master/Stranger Protocols on himself and hoping for the best.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Tristan you can get clothes, there’s a locker room across... the... hall...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tristan stared at Hannah, who in turn stared back at him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I have a jacket?” she offered, holding up the heavily-scented, sweaty garment. “You could tie it around your waist?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mustering up what dignity he could, Tristan took the denim, stood up, and (attempting to ignore the indignity of the moment), tied it around his waist. “Thank you, Hannah.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Anytime.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The art which inspired the work as a whole! Still three more chapters to go, so long as I can actually be arsed to write them...</p>
<p>https://i.imgur.com/8QnNsLh.png (part 1)<br/>https://i.imgur.com/7Y3XUr5.png (part 2)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Hey.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tristan had stripped his armor off in the lobby and Hannah could see where some of his curls had been scorched away by a tongue of fire, mere hours into the fight. Hannah’s shoulder still stung where the cloned limb had been grafted on, and her own hair still smelled vaguely burnt. Neither of them had showered, and thankfully both were too tired to care too much about that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the way Tristan’s footsteps fell, like all of the world’s problems had concentrated into whichever foot he was dragging forward, Hannah figured he might be feeling the exhaustion a little more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was how tragedies ended between the two of them. When they first fought Endbringers, they’d stayed silent. When they fought human monsters, they’d talk about anything and everything under the sun besides the abandoned battlefield. Over time both extremes had lost their relative significance, worn into near-normality by raw repetition.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That didn’t mean fighting monsters didn’t hurt, only that they’d slowly learned how to cope.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannah paused at Tristan’s door, surveying the room inside. A larger one than hers, which meant more in Philadelphia than it did in Brockton Bay. For all that space it was positively spartan, with a small work area flanked by filing cabinets, a king-sized bed, and a monitor mounted on a far wall. The only </span>
  <em>
    <span>truly</span>
  </em>
  <span> personal touch was a corkboard, pinned nearly full with drawings and t-shirts.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He collects his fan’s art.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannah nodded towards a door set into the wall. “Can I...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure.” He tugged at the zipper by his collar, and the remains of Tristan’s suit began to sag at the shoulders. “I’ll be a minute.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took mental effort for Hannah to keep the shower’s water at a reasonable temperature, to avoid shutting out the rest of the world in the favor of stinging heat followed by cold cotton. Experience had taught her that unassisted sleep tended to be worse than simply staring at a wall for hours on end, and all the temperature shifts would do is tire her out more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That, and Tristan had delicate skin, and he’d suffered enough for one night.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t take long for him to join Hannah. They fell into routine, into gently rubbing away the night’s filth, working sudsy products through one another’s hair and allowing the water-on-ceramic patter of the shower replace and drown out the ringing in their ears. It could’ve been something more, the start of something else, more than grooming, in any other time or place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Part of Hannah wished it was, but even that part of her knew that Tristan wouldn’t be.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They towel-dried themselves clinically. Tristan pulled on a pair of pajama pants, while Hannah pulled on a camisole and shorts. The two of them folded into bed, Tristan around Hannah, two blades in a utility knife, and for the longest time there was silence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>An unknown number of heartbeats later, Tristan began to cry.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He did that in his sleep. It was usually only after disasters, catastrophes of epic proportions, but it would also come along with no warning whatsoever. If he knew about the midnight episodes he did a good job of keeping that secret from Hannah, and she didn’t think there’d be anyone else in a position to know. She’d considered bringing it up with him, providing material for a therapist’s appointment, then dismissed thought almost as readily as it came.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neither of them had time for therapists.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead, she slowly turned around in his arms, then pulled him closer. His head came down, his arms would tighten around her back, and the quiet, shaking sobs would echo inside of her, like so much noise inside a cave. A hand on the back of his neck, one on his upper back, with words of consolation falling like ashes after a nuke.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s okay. Daylighter is dead. Candles are just candles again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Behemoth is gone. The quiet is because it’s night, not because your ears are blown out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your ghosts are only your own, not the conjurings of Bruja. I promise.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannah didn’t know if the words helped much, if at all. They all seemed inadequate to her, bandaids for gunshot wounds, and some days she wondered if she wasn’t doing more harm than good when she lived through these moments with him. Would he be better off with a professional, with someone who wasn’t working through their own evils, and was she a bad person for not bringing it up?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannah didn’t sleep, but those thoughts felt not different from the way nightmares had been described to her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually, she would feel his shaking recede, going from tectonic to aftershocks to stillness, and a tension she didn’t know existed would drain from her collarbone.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Not tonight.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>In those moments after Tristan’s misery had drained itself from his eyes and arms, Hannah would let herself weaken. She would give her limbs a chance to relax more completely than they could in any other time since she learned what gunfire sounded like, or any other place since she woke to a Stranger putting a knife through her throat. Stupid, crazy, completely nonsensical, but somehow the creature in her arms radiated ‘security’ in a way no amount of tinkertech could.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannah didn’t cry often, but on the rare times it happened she felt happier for it, like dusty soil receiving rainfall.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rest of the night was bliss. Tristan would breath against her, deep and even, a living reminder of the parts of the world worth killing for, and the bumblebees in Hannah’s mind would quiet as she played with his hair. Her eyes adjusted to the dark, and she allowed herself to imagine what the crayon drawings across the room might look like in the light, if they might have messy signatures in the corner, if the colors were pain-stakingly selected to match as closely as possible to the official colors of Chevalier or if the child would decide he looked better in purple.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannah snorted at the thought, and waited for Tristan to cease stirring against her before turning back to the room.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Almost as an afterthought, she kissed the top of Tristan’s head. “I love you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love you too.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Pegging</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It took no fewer than three days for Tristan to shift from ‘fighting’ to ‘relaxing.’</p><p>The first phase was turning off the news. His phone physically could not receive emergency calls for anything other than a S-class threat on his yearly vacation, and despite that he would still find himself compulsively checking it for the first several hours of his flight to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and occasionally well after that, despite the near-total lack of access to the electronic world.</p><p>The second phase was disarming. He didn’t lose weapons, not completely, and would feel naked without armor of some type on his person, but there was a difference between sensible precautions and walking into an Italian restaurant with a <em> zweihander </em> that doubled as a howitzer on his back. Instead it was a knife and a pistol, each decidedly harder than their size should allow, complemented by a vest that could take most small-arms fire without so much as flexing. All three could fit under an unremarkable, quality coat however, and allowed him to look like a normal person when going out to get coffee and a bagel.</p><p>The third phase was letting Chevalier's persona drop, and going back to being Tristan once again.</p><p>“Trey?”</p><p>“Hmm?” Tristan looked down to where Hannah was snapping in front of his face. They’d lain down on the couch together and let a movie play in the background, but Tristan had only been half-paying attention to the film. Most of his attention had been on a small, black box he’d left on the table, which Hannah had not yet asked about. “Yeah?”</p><p>She kissed him, a peck on the lips. “You’re smiling again.”</p><p>He reached up to touch the corners of his lips to confirm the statement, and felt the grin grow wider. “You’re right. Look at that.”</p><p>The credits began rolling, and while they played Tristan basked in the feeling of being truly himself for the first time in months.</p><p>Tristan thought of the box, and asked, “Can we try something tonight?” before the nerve left him.</p><p>A few of Hannah’s fingers had snuck into the gaps in Tristan’s button-up, gently tracing aimlessly over his skin. “What were you thinking?”</p><p>“I want you to fuck me.”</p><p>“I want that too.”</p><p>“I mean like... you in me, not the other way around.”</p><p>The fingers stopped. “Ah.”</p><p>“You don’t want to.”</p><p>“No. I mean, I’m surprised, not against the idea.”</p><p>“If you don’t want to—”</p><p>“Trey, I’m not against the idea, and I’ve been feeling how much you want it pressing into my leg this entire movie.”</p><p>“I’m—”</p><p>“If you finish that sentence the way I think you’re going to, I’m going to slap you.”</p><p>Tristan’s teeth <em> clicked </em> shut.</p><p>Hannah’s lips twitched up. “You’re smiling again.”</p><p>“You bring it out of me.”</p><p>She reached out, picked up the remote, and shut off the TV.</p><p>Then she picked up the box.</p><p>“Well then, what are we waiting for?”</p><hr/><p>It took a while to get into position.</p><p>First, they had to get undressed. While little more than a perfunctory act when Miss Militia and Chevalier were waiting in the wings, Tristan made a point of drawing it out when he could. The luxury of waiting, of <em> needing </em> but not immediately <em> receiving </em>, made him feel weightless, like each and every manacle of responsibility had loosened, even if just a fraction.</p><p>His shirt. Hannah’s. His pants. Hannah’s. Her bra. His shorts. Each missing garment a monument of effort, patience given form in absence, another casualty of a roll of his hips against her thigh, of the quiet gasps which slipped from his throat like prayers whenever Hannah bit down on his neck and <em> sucked </em>. The clothes, for all that they meant, seemed to slip from their limbs like ice melting into water, seamlessly dripping off arms and legs like he and Hannah were moving against one another mid-air and not on a couch half an hour away from the nearest town.</p><p>Tristan broke the latest kiss. “Please.”</p><p>Hannah adjusted herself so that she lay in between his legs, then began to push.</p><p>He’d bought a small dildo, not too much longer or wider than a few fingers. It’d come with the harness, along with a generous bottle of lube and instructions to use a lot of it, which they’d followed. There’d been a moment of shock when cold and wet touched Tristan’s asshole, quickly replaced by a <em> spreading </em> sensation that had him reflexively sucking in breath.</p><p>Hannah stopped at the sound, but didn’t pull back.</p><p>Tristan exhaled, then pulled her closer. “Keep going.”</p><p>It took what felt like ages for its length to slip all the way in. Each inch, while not unpleasant, was <em> intense </em> , new and unusual and at least as intimidating as it was arousing. Part of him (the part that remembered why he went hunting for his brothers and not his father) had been expecting it to hurt, expected it to feel wrong in some way, a part which fell silent when Hannah fell fully against him and he felt <em> full </em>.</p><p>For a few moments they just lay like that, her on top of him, his legs around her waist, breathing out of sync.</p><p>Then Hannah pulled out a little and began to thrust.</p><p>Tristan stopped thinking after that. It was as if something had broken in him, shifted in such a way that consciousness was not thinking but <em> being </em>, that he’d become the rub of fabric against his back and flesh against his front and silicone in his ass, each moment remaking him anew from sensation. Reflex tore moans from his mouth, words he forgot as soon as they left his mouth and entered Hannah’s, because instead of time he lived in a world where only what was real existed, and what was real began and ended at his skin.</p><p>He came hard enough to choke, and it took three minutes for him to focus enough to recognize Hannah’s face.</p><p>“Are you okay?”</p><p>Words were wind given meaning, and Tristan still didn’t recognize that.</p><p>Instead, he pulled her head down and kissed Hannah.</p><p>“I love you.”</p><p>“I love you, but are you okay?”</p><p>“Never better.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Do you know when I first fell in love with you?” Hannah asked, staring out over the waters of an ocean disturbed by inter-dimensional crosswinds, dyed the color of a nearly-overripe mango by the setting sun.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tristan was curled against her, head on her shoulder and arm across her chest. His chin was more bristly than he preferred, but razors were a luxury after the apocalypse. He’d donated his monthly ration to teammates who needed them more, and Hannah didn’t mind the sensation enough to tell him to stop being kind. “No. When?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was on a Sunday in September. Between Vanderhoof and Hyderabad. The last day of the month where we could have sex with the window open, because after that it would be too cold. It was a night I’d actually fallen asleep, and it was thanks to your heartbeat.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannah paused, and Tristan put his hand over her heart. After a moment, “I can see why.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m being serious,” she said, smiling despite herself. “My head was on your chest, and I’d just woken up. You were looking out the window, a look of tired acceptance on your face, and I almost asked you to marry me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tristan’s arm fell back down across her. “Tired acceptance?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She squeezed him closer. “Yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That doesn’t seem very romantic,” he said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It wasn’t. You looked old then, Tristan. Older than you are now, and more worn than a pair of sneakers on a telephone line. There were seven intersecting scars on your chest then and none were as deep as the furrow in your brow.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tristan glanced down at what of their bodies was above the covers, farmer’s-tanned and olive skin with dense, irregular scars. They’d both been lucky enough to avoid irreversible, life-changing injuries, but not every fight had left the two of them better off. “And this was attractive, how?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It wasn’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tristan got the look of a star student who finally didn’t know the right answer. “I’m a little lost here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannah smiled. “You were going to get up. I knew that, moments before it happened, and that after you got out of bed, you were going to dress yourself. You would have breakfast, fill out paperwork, and then get in costume before going out on patrol. You would get up having seen more combat in twenty years than many saw in their entire lives, lost more friends than most people make, and you knew the worst had yet to come.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tristan deflated against her. “Way to kill the mood, Hannah.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She lifted her free hand to his, squeezing gently. “I’m not done yet.” After a moment's pause, she continued. “You get up in the morning. You keep going. You don’t burn out, don’t turn the job into something it's not, and don’t make it less than what it is. You hurt some, save as many as you can, and move on without leaving behind the burdens and debts you owe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You try your best, know it won’t always be good enough, and feel pain without letting it cripple you. No one else I know can do that, Trey. Almost no one else has kept trying to be good when evil is easier, and when they did it wasn’t because they were trying to do the right thing. They’d do it to survive, or for revenge, or for money, or for fame.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannah sighed, letting her head fall to the side. “You didn’t, and that’s made a difference for me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wind kept whistling, touching at Hannah’s hair, and if her ears weren’t mistaken the City had begun to wind down for the evening.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Were you serious about marrying me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Tristan had revealed that he was pregnant Hannah couldn’t be more surprised.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“... yes, yes I was,” she said, reflecting on the emotions and making the call for her twenty-year-old self. Even if past-Hannah wouldn’t have wanted to try to make that permanent of a bond in a world where she, personally, was not the most dangerous weapon in any given city, the answer should’ve been yes. Trey was a good man, both then and now, and one she could trust to endure through storms conventional and not.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tristan kept silent after that, watching mango become pomegranate become the red of wine grapes, darkness settling, truly, in a way Hannah only remembered from years long-past, in a village where street lamps were as much a fantasy as pavement.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Would you be serious now?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannah’s heart seized in her chest, and when she looked down Tristan’s face didn’t have a trace of fear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tristan sat up, a man of thirty with a life of troubles fit for two dead, who made Hannah laugh with his joy, and who brought her tears when he was hurt. “Would you marry me now?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took Hannah two tries to get the words out. The first to pick the right ones, and the second to actually make them audible.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, I would marry you. Here and now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tristan smiled, easy and open, and the night became bright enough to dance in. “Hannah Allenwrought, will you marry me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will, Tristan Béroul,” Hannah answered, taking his hand to her lips, chest light and fluttering. “I love you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love you too.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Well, that's it. It's a short chapter, with no sex, but honestly I was running out of steam pretty hard for this pairing. I'd rather wrap it up and move on to other projects than let it languish, and hopefully the fact that the fic is complete will make people pay attention.</p><p>Have a good evening, and hope for love! &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>https://i.imgur.com/j2LS3o0.png</p></blockquote></div></div>
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